Will lowered his window slightly so that he could help out Renaldo in a similar manner, but then a muzzle shoved inside.
Horatio was ready. The robot’s arms shot upward, deploying the barrels attached to the forearms. They fired instantly, the energy bolts drilling into that muzzle and melting it away.
Will started. “Sheesh!” He leaned outward slightly to fire up at the robot.
“Careful, Will,” Rhea said.
She aimed past him, through the open window, at Renaldo’s semi. Another tricky shot. This time when she fired, she missed. Another shot. Another miss.
Will abruptly pulled back inside. “Think I made him mad!”
The robot on the rooftop swung down into view, and reached for Will, the muzzles underneath its forearms smoking.
Both Rhea and Horatio opened fire, shooting the robot at almost point-blank range. The machine slumped, collapsing on the partially open window.
Will shoved the robot off the door and it dropped out of view.
“That leaves another five,” Will said as he aimed at Renaldo’s semi.
Rhea glanced at Gizmo’s feed; the robots clinging to her own tanker were slowly making their way toward the cabin, but they were still a ways off yet.
“Five?” she said. “I see only four.”
Will shrugged. “You’re right. Maybe one fell off. Or a technical finally decided to pull its weight.”
“Could use some help here!” Chuck sent.
She aimed past the gap in her window, toward Chuck’s cabin. The robots were assaulting it from all sides, ripping away the protective metal layers while firing blindly into the breaches they made.
She targeted one of the robots, and as two semis swerved to and fro, she wondered vaguely if there was a way to tap into the “random” path the AIs of the tractor units intended to take. It would certainly make targeting easier. They were all on the same side after all, so she should be able to get access…
Well, there wasn’t really time to figure that out now.
She fired thrice, adjusting her aim slightly with each shot, until she scored a hit with the fourth. She missed the power cell, but did score a glancing blow against the head; however it wasn’t enough to stop the robot, and the machine simply turned back on her and fired several bolts in return, forcing her to duck behind the intact portion of the metal shield that protected her window.
Polycarbonate fingers shoved into the gap and grabbed the edges of the shield, bending it right back to expose half the passenger window.
With both hands, Rhea swung her pistol toward the uncovered triangular section of glass, but then a fist smashed through the pane, catching her by surprise.
She fired, melting through a rifle barrel that hung beneath the forearm of her robotic attacker, but the arm itself otherwise remained intact; those polycarbonate fingers wrapped around her left wrist and pulled her toward the window. The pistol caught on the lip of the opening and was ripped from her grasp. She was dragged out, but her midsection caught on the jagged edges of glass, and she halted halfway.
Horatio grabbed onto her leg. “I got you!”
The enemy combat robot crouched on the roof of the cabin above her. Its free hand lowered, bringing the deadly barrel that hung from underneath its forearm to bear. In only a moment that barrel would be aimed squarely upon her head.
Her left hand remained firmly gripped by those irresolute fingers; but her right arm was free. As was the X2-59 she kept strapped to that wrist.
Rhea swung the blade while it was still deploying; the sharp steel leaped forth, enveloped in the bright blue sparks of plasma generated by built-in electrolasers, and she cut off the weapon arm of her opponent at the elbow. She beheaded the robot at almost the same time.
These particular robot models could operate without heads—their AI cores were stored in their torsos, along with the power cells. However, the head contained everything it needed to communicate with the other machines in its squad, along with its vision and hearing sensors. In essence, she had blinded it.
The fingers that held her wrist tightened, as if intending to apply enough crushing force to sever her hand.
Rhea smiled grimly and brought the X2-59 down for another pass. She cut off the hand and the robot released her, staggering backward. She finished the job by plunging the blade into its torso, striking the AI core. Feeling exposed, she promptly slid back inside and retracted the blade. Horatio released her ankle along the way.
She scooped up the pistol from where it had dropped to the floor. She waited a few moments, taking cover behind the bent triangular remnants of the shielding, then peered past. Only two robots remained on Chuck’s cabin—seems he had been busy.
With Horatio’s help she picked off those two. She occasionally glanced at Gizmo’s feed in the upper right of her vision, not wanting to be caught off guard again. The four robots that yet clung to her tanker hadn’t made much progress—apparently they had decided that firing at the pickups and drones was a better idea at the moment. They were certainly taking a lot of targets down, considering that most of the vehicles escorting the tankers were ignoring the robots, occupied as they were by the airborne fighters.
The robots clinging to the tank section of Chuck’s semi were behaving the same way, and they made easy targets; when she began to fire at them, they quickly scrambled to the far side of the tank and took cover.
“If any of you drones or pickups can spare a moment, we have some
